Self Aware

“And Mr. B?” He turned to me in expectation. “I am aware of how hypercritical I can be!”

My comments weren’t directed at B, as my critical comments had to do with someone else entirely, but B had witnessed them and was making a passively aggressive disapproving face. He’s a “live and let live” kind of guy, and I often am, too. However, I have standards as a teacher that must be met by fellow instructors, and when they’re not, I get warm under the collar.

As I had said just moments earlier to B and J, one of my teachers once told me, “Bill, don’t drop your voice at the end of sentences, and don’t mumble what you have to say, unless what you have to say is unimportant. And if that’s the case, don’t bother saying it at all, because if you drop your voice or mumble, what you’re saying will come across as unimportant and not worth listening to.”

I’ve just spent more than an hour listening to a lecture on a topic that I find interesting. However, the lecturer dropped the final 5-7 words of almost every sentence he spoke, and/or he mumbled frequently. Even when I sat directly in front of the loudspeakers, I still couldn’t understand him. What a frustrating event! I so wanted to know what he was saying, but as he finished statement after statement, his points were lost, just because no one ever told him that he must keep the volume going and not to mumble!

Having railed against him, I sat down and glanced at Mr. B and Mr. I. Mr. I, a.k.a. J, knows me better than Mr. B does and is used to my expectations of fellow instructors, so it hadn’t caused him any concerns that I’d gone off on the lecturer for mumbling. Still, I thought it best to acknowledge my own awareness of the critical nature of my comments so that Mr. B would know I’m aware of how I come across. He seemed to appreciate that.

Between the mumbling lecturer and an unstable internet connection that has dropped us from the online group five times in less than 90 minutes tonight and caused audio slowdowns about ten times, I’m relieved we’ve come to the end of the road with this Zoom doom.